Has SCUBA training gone too far?

[agesilaus]

I can see Nitrox, Rescue and the Caverns-Caves series of courses (that would include tec diving). I don't know enough about rebreather diving but I assume a course in that makes sense too. The rest are mostly income raising devices. Just remember that a business has one purpose: to make money. And there is nothing wrong with that.

BK

 

[Hawkwood]

... I hear of OW being taught in a DS in the PNW...

Yup, we teach most of our Open Waters in dry suits as well. If they are going to dive locally they might as well start off with the tools to make it fun. They'd only need the card if they plan on renting a suit after.


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[Karibelle]

I can see Nitrox, Rescue and the Caverns-Caves series of courses (that would include tec diving). I don't know enough about rebreather diving but I assume a course in that makes sense too. The rest are mostly income raising devices. Just remember that a business has one purpose: to make money. And there is nothing wrong with that.

BK

As someone who teaches a number of specialties, I have to disagree. When I watch a former navigation student deal beautifully with a low vis, strong current situation on a night dive using her nav skills, I have to conclude she learned something during that course. I think students learn things even in what some posters in this thread would call fluff.

The bottom line for me is if you don't want to take a course, don't take it. Why do so many people then also feel compelled to take a next step in assuming that just because they didn't see any value in that service, no one else will either? I don't have a flat screen television. Does that mean I should pooh pooh all of the people who DO have one? Why do we see so much of that in the scuba world?

 

[nimoh]

As someone who teaches a number of specialties, I have to disagree. When I watch a former navigation student deal beautifully with a low vis, strong current situation on a night dive using her nav skills, I have to conclude she learned something during that course. I think students learn things even in what some posters in this thread would call fluff.

The bottom line for me is if you don't want to take a course, don't take it. Why do so many people then also feel compelled to take a next step in assuming that just because they didn't see any value in that service, no one else will either? I don't have a flat screen television. Does that mean I should pooh pooh all of the people who DO have one? Why do we see so much of that in the scuba world?

I think the issue is that some people feel they were duped after taking some specialty classes because they didn't get as much out of it as they thought they should. Perhaps it was a bad instructor? Perhaps they were a poor student? Perhaps it was a poor course structure? Perhaps they had unreasonable expectations?

Regardless of what reason they think was the cause, they probably feel frustrated since they didn't know enough before the class to make an informed decision and are left with the opinion after the class that it was a complete waste of time and money.

 

[boulderjohn]

I think the issue is that some people feel they were duped after taking some specialty classes because they didn't get as much out of it as they thought they should. Perhaps it was a bad instructor? Perhaps they were a poor student? Perhaps it was a poor course structure? Perhaps they had unreasonable expectations?

Regardless of what reason they think was the cause, they probably feel frustrated since they didn't know enough before the class to make an informed decision and are left with the opinion after the class that it was a complete waste of time and money.

I went to a very expensive school for my B.A. One day in the middle of my freshman calculus class, a student stood up and delivered a 5 minute lecture to the teacher. She told him he was a horrible teacher. She said her parents had spent a lot of money to send her to this school, and he was stealing that money from her parents through his worthless instruction. Then she sat down and class went on.

She was right. He was the worst teacher I have ever seen anywhere, and I had him for two classes that semester. His inability to teach was largely responsible for my decision to switch majors.

There has never been a time in my life that I have said that, based on that experience, no one should go to college, or if they do, they should not take freshman calculus.

 

[rhwestfall]

.... OR:

Some may have had a significantly different learning experience that included many (not all) of the "specialties" as core instruction....

 

[scoobydrew]

I think the issue is that some people feel they were duped after taking some specialty classes because they didn't get as much out of it as they thought they should. Perhaps it was a bad instructor? Perhaps they were a poor student? Perhaps it was a poor course structure? Perhaps they had unreasonable expectations?

And there are people out there who got bad Open Water courses but that does not mean they are all worthless.

There are plenty of places where research can be done on a course and a course provider before signing up. Asking what will be covered and in how much detail before committing should be easy enough for general public. If someone provides a substandard course then that is a different story but that is still not an issue with the specialty program as such.

 

[nimoh]

And there are people out there who got bad Open Water courses but that does not mean they are all worthless.

There are plenty of places where research can be done on a course and a course provider before signing up. Asking what will be covered and in how much detail before committing should be easy enough for general public. If someone provides a substandard course then that is a different story but that is still not an issue with the specialty program as such.

I agree, but there are people that think current OW are worthless too. They argue about how much better OW classes were 30 years ago, and how watered down they have become.

I am not saying I believe that OW and specialty classes are worthless, only trying to make a guess as to why people might have that opinion.

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

I got two new specialty cards in November--neither one from PADI, BTW. Both were from PSAI, the agency represented in this thread by Trace Malin, who posted above. I took both of them because I wanted the training. Cards came with both of them. In one case, I really didn't care whether I got the card or not. In the other, I very much needed the card.

The first was for sidemount diving in an overhead environment. I could have taken the open water sidemount diving course from the same instructor and learned much of the same stuff, but since I was planning to do most of my sidemount diving in an overhead environment, that's what I chose. I got very good instruction, and I got a card. The card is sitting in a box in a cupboard and will probably never see the light of day again, but who cares? The instruction was valuable, and I got what I paid for.

The other card, from the same instructor, was for operating a dive propulsion vehicle (scooter) in an overhead environment. The only difference between the card I received for that class and the card I received for the sidemount class is that I have already needed to show it. When I dived the Devil's Eye system in Florida last month, I had to show the card each day to be allowed to use my scooter in the cave.

Can someone tell me what is wrong with what I did in either of these cases?

I'm the same way ... got a drawer full of cards I'll probably never even look at again.

When I went down to take my sidemount class in Florida I wasn't even expecting to get a card ... it showed up in the mail a week or so after I got back home. It never occurred to me that I'd want one ... didn't even know which agency it would come from at the time. All I knew was that I wanted to learn how to dive that way, and that I wanted to learn from the particular instructor I went down there to take the class from. That card ended up in the drawer with the rest of 'em.

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[T.C.]

But many divers like taking specialty classes ... even if they understand that other people will think of them as a waste of time and money. Unless it's your time and your money, why should you care?

I really don't. It's up to the other person to decide. My only concern would be the new diver that thinks they need a certain specialty card to do that particular activity.